The Italian Kitchen of Marcella Hazan - Thursday January 15th at 6PM

Marcella Hazan had never cooked before her marriage. As she recounted in the introduction to her 1997 book Marcella Cucina... there I was, having to feed a young, hard-working husband who could deal cheerfully with most of life's ups and downs, but not with an indifferent meal. In Italy, I would not have wasted time thinking about it. My mother cooked, my father cooked, both my grandmothers cooked, even the farm girls who came in to clean could cook. In the kitchen of my New York apartment there was no one…Hazan's recipes emphasize careful attention to detail. She recommends preparing food by hand rather than by machine and prefers the stove-top to the oven because it allows the cook to engage more fully with the food. However, her recipes are not necessarily complicated, one of the most popular recipes, wrote Marcella, consisted simply of a chicken roasted with two lemons in its cavity. Her many cookbooks have been our guide for decades when we want to prepare authentic Italian food. To pay homage to this great culinarian we’ll craft a first course of Spaghetti alla Chitarra with sugo di Zucchini e Timo (handmade spaghetti with zucchini and thyme sauce) then recreate her famous Pollo all’Abruzzese coi Pomodrini le Olive (fricassees chicken Abruzzi-style with rosemary, white wine, cherry tomatoes and olives) and to finish, Torta di Arance all’Anconetana (orange cake, Ancona-style) $69.